Sustainable Rural Electrification: Harnessing a Cosmolocal Wind

Katerina Troullaki, Stelios Rozakis, Kostas Latoufis, Chris Giotitsas, Christina Priavolou and Fausto Freire
Additional contact information
Katerina Troullaki: Bioeconomy and Biosystems Economics Laboratory, Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Akrotiri Campus, 73100 Chania, Greece
Kostas Latoufis: Rural Electrification Research Group (RurERG), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 10682 Athens, Greece
Chris Giotitsas: Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech), Ehitajate tee 5, 19086 Tallinn, Estonia
Christina Priavolou: Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech), Ehitajate tee 5, 19086 Tallinn, Estonia
Fausto Freire: Association for the Development of Industrial Aerodynamics (ADAI), Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Coimbra, Rua Luís Reis Santos, 3030-788 Coimbra, Portugal

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 13, 1-16

Abstract: In this article, we explore the sustainability potential of an alternative commons-based mode of production called cosmolocalism. Cosmolocal production combines global knowledge production with local physical production. Such a production mode has been applied across the globe for locally manufacturing small wind turbines (SWTs) for rural electrification. We assess the sustainability of such cosmolocal SWTs in a case study of electrifying a rural community in Ethiopia. In this context, the life cycles of five SWT alternatives have been compared, ranging from conventional industrially produced turbines to open-source locally manufactured and maintained ones. Our case study indicates that the local manufacturing and maintenance of SWTs offer significant advantages and may redeem small wind turbines as a sustainable component for rural electrification. Specifically, the fully cosmolocal alternative (A1) performs better than any other alternative in technical, environmental, and social criteria, while it is close to the best-performing alternative with regard to economic objectives. For this solution to be implemented, the institutional burden cannot be neglected, but can rather be considered a sine qua non condition for locally manufactured and maintained SWTs. A set of generic institutional interventions to create favourable conditions for cosmolocal production is proposed, which needs to be elaborated in a context-specific manner.

Keywords: sustainability; life cycle assessment; integrated assessment; small wind turbines; rural electrification; commons-based peer production; sustainable production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/13/4659/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/13/4659/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:13:p:4659-:d:847745

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().